No Stone Unturned
by petticote
Summary: They owe a duty to their family. Even the family they've forgotten. [Oneshot. Yae and Mafuyu. Post-Fatal Frame 1.]


Written for Remix Revival 2018, a multi-fandom fic exchange where participants write or draw a piece inspired by another user's work. This is based on "The Stones of Home" by Estirose over on Archive of Our Own. While it isn't necessary to read Estirose's original story to understand my take on it, I strongly recommend doing so.

* * *

Yae never strays far from the mansion. She can't say she knows how long she's been wandering, but she knows she's alone. She'd called for her husband once, when the night had been darker and she'd still felt the rope cinched tight around her neck, and even as the oldest boards and stones crumble down to rot and the weeds creep out to swallow up the ruin, Yae goes on, bound by some impossible purpose. She stares out into the woods surrounding Himuro and tries to tell herself that she won't get lost again. Someone is calling for her. A woman. A girl. But she never goes deeper than the edges of the trees. Yae stares into the blackness before retreating into the cold. Her daughter, her daughter. Surely she couldn't have gone far?

Yae's first memories are of a forest, vast and dark. A girl screaming into the shadows and clawing desperately at her throat. Yae had been dressed for death, yet she hadn't been allowed to die. Now death has come to her, and Yae has never felt more empty. She'd watched Ryozo leave her, watched him ascend with all the others bound to this horrible place, and she'd asked herself why she hadn't been allowed to go with him. It all goes back to that night among that trees, that single empty gate, that path leading to nowhere. She hadn't been allowed to move on then, and she wouldn't wouldn't be allowed to move on now. Yae has never felt more cold.

Silence looms over the mansion like a blanket of smoke, dark and smothering. That's one thing that hasn't changed from the days Yae could last feel warmth. Three people could never fill a house this size, and even with servants, Yae could wander for hours and never see another soul. But she'd never felt alone, not truly. It was like the walls themselves had been watching her. Now Yae doesn't know which she fears more: the weight of some unseen eye, or the utter absence of one. Sometimes she wanders the gardens, watching as they overtake centuries of history and trying to retrace steps she can't fully remember. Sometimes she wanders to the koto Ryozo had claimed as hers and tries not to think about the fate that had befallen the last woman to own it. Without her daughter at her side and her husband listening in the room just beyond, the music rings as hollow as the last standing chambers. Her fingers are stiff with cold. She can't take the koto with her, to some place less dark. It's bolted to the floor. The night she finds one of Mikoto's dolls is the night she can no longer hold back her tears. She lies down in the room she had once shared with her husband and clutches the doll until it breaks. Like everything else, that little smiling face tumbles down to dust.

Yae knows time is passing, though she can't remember the last time she's seen the sun. Many a night she had stood on the balcony overlooking the great dead cherry tree in the heart of the manor, in another time, in another life, and her husband had never hesitated to join her, even when his work had kept him awake for far longer than either of them would have liked. Yae's hands had always been so cold, and yet he'd never once complained when she'd reached out to find his own. Yae thinks about those nights and all the words that didn't need to be said, all the words that did. Ryozo's hands had always been so warm. She can almost feel them on her until she snaps out of her dream to stare down at the tree where she'd died. She wonders if Ryozo had been the one to find her, wonders more if he'd been the one to cut her down. Yae wanders back into the rubble and the cobwebs and hides from the sky until a fine sheen of frost ghosts every branch and stone. By then, she's begun to forget her voice. But she never forgets the voice calling her name from the trees.

It's a night like any other. Cold, quiet, with the softest stirring of wind. Yae can hear birds somewhere in the gray, but they never stay around long. It takes all her courage to wander back up to the koto, and still she hesitates just outside the room, cupping her fingers over the wood as the shadows wait to greet her. No one will ever come for her. She has no one to come to. At last she pulls the doors open and wanders inside. It's a habit, to open doors, even when she could pass through them with a thought, another habit to close them behind her even when she's all alone. Yae drops down to the floor, her fingers finding the strings while the rest of her tries to find quiet.

Yae has never had an ear for music. She can follow notes on a sheet and draw one song from another, but it's all just noise to her, another way to ruin silence. Ryozo had thought otherwise. He could have talked for hours about the subtleties of some ancient instrument, or some squeaking melody written by a composer centuries dead, or the harmonies of songs from the most bustling coastal city to the quietest mountain glen. Ryozo had loved music. And how Yae had tried to please him on that day she'd knelt before the koto lovingly displayed in the Makabe estate and tried to pluck the notes from its beautiful shining strings. She may as well have been plucking the whiskers from a cat, for how much the instrument screeched. Yet Ryozo had never once laughed, smiling that boyish smile that had never failed to warm her. Every morning he'd ask if she'd wanted to continue practicing, and every evening they'd sit on the porch just outside, listening to the cicadas as their gracious hosts looked on. The strings had been so rough on the delicate skin of her fingers. Once Yae had asked him if he could ever love a girl with calluses as big as hers. He had laughed, soft and surprised, and he had drawn her hand into his, smiling at her like she had been the most wonderful thing in the world. The Himuro Mansion comes back to her like a crash of stone. Yae scrapes her hands over the floor and lets her eyes wander the shadows as the music jangles tunelessly from the koto's last ten strings.

Will this be all, Yae wonders. Will this be her eternity? Trapped in a house she could never call a home, searching for a family she could never say she deserved? To say it's her end would be to admit that there's somehow an end in sight. This is a punishment, she tells herself. A punishment for bringing her daughter into this horrible house and a punishment for abandoning her husband when he'd needed her the most. And a punishment for whatever had been waiting for her just beyond that gate, whatever waits for her in those trees. All her life she'd thought those lost fifteen years had been retribution for some grave sin, and now the years are hers. Only hers. Forever.

Like a warning, the house creaks and bellows around her.

It's a great struggle to stand, but Yae does, passing over chests she'd never opened and clothes she'd never warmed. There's a sash Ryozo had given her not a year before they'd wed. There's a kimono she had once hoped to pass on to Mikoto, when _she_ would have been wed. Yae has been caught in her memories for far too long. Never before has she longed for the mercy of forgetting. She turns to the door, arms curled around her sides, and nearly tumbles through the wall when she finds a face staring back at her.

There's a man in the room. Tall, pale, oddly garbed. He's not Ryozo. Yae stands frozen between a desk and a rotted silk screen. Can he see her? Can he hear her gasping? An eternity, and the man swallows the knot in his throat. Yae's heart aches when she sees that he's hardly more than a boy. His shoulders lift, his breath hitches, and then he leans in, like he's trying to remember her face.

"... Mom?" he whispers, like someone has their hand clenched around his neck.

Yae blinks, curling her hands tight around her wrists. She tries so hard to recall his face, can't.

"No," the boy-the _man_ -says. He stumbles back as his legs pass through a rotted panel of shelving. He's like her, Yae realizes, her stomach sinking. Dead. "You're…" He clutches his face.

"Have we…?" Yae swallows, paralyzed with shock. Fifteen years, gone and forgotten. "I'm sorry, but have we met before?"

"No," the man whispers. He still won't look at her. Gods help her, he looks so _young_. "We haven't."

That only makes Yae hold on to herself more tightly. The silence has never been more of a burden. At last the man lifts his head, but not his eyes. He wavers back a step and drags down a breath she knows he doesn't need.

"The music," the man breathes. "Was that you?"

Stiffly, Yae nods.

"You're…" The man's eyes are so dark, so wide. They look so much like Mikoto's. "Have you been here all this time?"

Yae doesn't answer, doesn't know how. He knows her face, clearly, but nothing about _his_ rings familiar. Nothing but those eyes.

"My grandmother," the man says, like that should mean something to her. He starts to say something else only to tuck his head to the floor. Yae stares on, too shaken to mind her courtesies. There are so many names she's forgotten, so many faces. Ryozo had tried so hard to help her remember, and she'd never remembered one. Yae stares at him and tries. At least until he seems to find his footing and stammers out something more. "You're the folklorist's wife, aren't you?"

"Ryozo," Yae whispers sharply, lurching forward. "You know Ryozo?"

"Ryozo?" the man repeats, more to himself than her. "Is that his name?"

"You know my husband," Yae says. "How?"

The man doesn't seem to hear. His eyes are rooted to wall, bright with confusion. He whirls around like he can see straight through to the atrium. "You aren't supposed to be here. _We_ weren't supposed to…" He turns to look at her. The shine in his eyes couldn't be more pained.

Yae scrapes up the last of her resolve and steps firmly forward. "Who are you?" She somehow keeps her voice from shaking. "Tell me your name."

The man stares at her for a long time. "Hinasaki," he finally says, and ice shreds down Yae's spine like the point of a lance. "Hinasaki Mafuyu."

Yae stands trembling. She tries to find a face she hasn't seen in years. Mr. Hinasaki. Ryozo's friend. This can't be him. He's far too young. And yet he knows her husband. How?

"Your name," Hinasaki says. "She… never told…"

Yae bites back her questions and answers with what she knows. "Mrs. Munakata," she says, and that's all. That's all she's ever been.

Hinasaki falls back to rest on the edge of a filthy old chest. His legs seem to snap out from under him. That hair, those clothes. He can't be from around here, can he? He rubs at his eyes, breathes deep. He pulls his head up as if looking at her causes him physical pain. "This mansion," he starts. He twists his sleeve in his fingers. "How long have you been here?"

"… I don't know." Yae falls to the side to settle on a water-warped desk. She thinks about a rope cutting into her neck and darkness tearing at her skin.

"Are you alone?"

Yae twists her hands until pain shoots up her wrists, and when her thoughts finally come back to her and her knuckles find their place on her knees, Hinasaki breaks the silence, frowning all the more.

"Mo—" Hinasaki flinches. "Mrs. Munakata."

Yae looks on expectantly.

"Do you…?" A breath. A pause. "Do you know who I am?"

Guilt tugs at Yae's mind like a rusting fishhook, cold and diseased as it works to unspool her. Everything before Ryozo is just a cold, yawning void. She's been that girl crying in the woods for so, so long. "I'm sorry…" She leans in hesitantly. "Did you have a father who lived in these mountains? A grandfather? An uncle? I knew a Hinasaki. And he knew my husband. Is that what drew you here?"

"No." Hinasaki grimaces. "I mean, not… directly."

Yae searches his face for an answer.

So he tells her. It can't be that long, and Yae doesn't breathe a word through the lot of it, and still nothing comes back to her, not even when her shock sinks down into horror only to crawl back up into a creeping sort of numbness. Her daughter is dead. She's been dead for years. But not here and not alone, and certainly not in the hands of some malformed spirit. When Hinasaki finally goes quiet, she claws through his words until they finally start to settle. Something croons on the wind. There's a draft in the house, drawing whines out of every nook and shadow.

"Mrs. Munakata," her great-grandson says.

Yae says nothing. Yae doesn't know if she could. All this time alone, and these are the first words she hears.

"I—I know someone who might be able to help you." Hinasaki stiffly holds out his hand. Yae tenses at his boldness, yet all she can think of is Ryozo, no older than sixteen and taking her by the wrist to lead her out of those darkened woods. "She—might be the reason you're still here."

Yae blinks back tears. "Is she the one calling me?"

His hand falters. "Calling you?"

"The girl in the forest." Yae's eyes grow hotter still. "She calls out for me every night. She's not Mikoto. And I can never find her."

Hinasaki's wide-eyed stare says enough.

"Who else is here?" Yae asks. "Who else is waiting?"

"It's only us." Hinasaki clenches his jaw. "Kirie. Me. And now you."

Yae sits petrified.

"We… We can help you," Hinasaki says, far less sure of himself. "We can try to…"

"I'm here for a reason," Yae says. "I know I am." She clutches at her throat. "Something called me back. Something took Mikoto away from me. I can't go home yet."

"Home?"

Hinasaki has the good sense to not go trailing after her when she lets out a sob and sinks down into the shadows below.

* * *

She doesn't see Hinasaki the next night. Or the next. She doesn't try to seek him out, though she hardly bothers to hide herself. Another moon leads her to her husband's study, the first night she's found the courage to come here, and the starlight trickling in through the one splintered screen does little to brighten a room that had once been so warm and cheerful. She draws a book from the shelves with the tip of a finger and leaves the paintings and scrolls where Ryozo set them, a quiet reminder of the histories he'd worked so long and passionately to preserve. Yae sinks down onto a pillow and flips sightlessly through the pages. Much of the writing has faded. Entire sections have broken loose from the binding. But she hasn't come here to read. Yae lifts her head when she can't make sense of the kana, taking in the destruction even as Ryozo's touch leaps out from every book and board. She's never been in here for more than a moment, and never without him. She wonders if it's right to feel like she's intruding. There's a pair of molded gray slippers tucked neatly before her knees, a torn, tatty jacket draped just beside the writing desk. Yae tries and fails to remember if she ever saw her husband wearing them.

The next book is hardly in better shape, though the loose black scrawl of her husband's pen comes to her much more easily. She hears his voice in every word. She's been needing this smile. Some pages are scribbled with ink, others with charcoal, and Yae only has to see the smallest smear of soil to realize that this is one of the hundreds of travel journals he'd filled over the years. Many of the tales he's transcribed seem so hopeless and gruesome. Many more are written in old, obscure dialects, stories taken from the mouths of countless village elders from the most remote stretches of the country. Maybe it's better that she can hardly understand them. Yae carefully tucks the book back into place and stares at a tiny paper lion sitting perfectly intact in a case. Mikoto made this for him. She's sure of it. Yae stares at it for a moment too long before pushing it behind a little wooden statue and burying it in books. She can't distract herself any longer. This isn't what she's come here to do.

Thousands of letters spanning decades and beyond sit buried in a battered trunk. If there's a system of organization to it, and surely there is, Yae can't find it, but the pages are beautifully preserved, wrapped and wrapped again in strips of hide, cloth, and twine. The first paper she takes is soft and brown with age. It's whole and smooth and dated less than a year before Mikoto's birth. Yae carefully tucks it back into its stack and digs deeper still, running her hands through history as a distant wind comes promising a storm. She only has to feel the slightest tingling at the back of her neck, the slightest breath of cold, and then there's a presence at the door, a quiet knocking just outside. Yae hardly hears herself when she calls him in.

Hinasaki can't be younger than eighteen, and yet he carries himself like a boy waiting to be scolded by his mother, looking at her with such pain in his eyes that Yae almost forgets she doesn't know how to talk to him. They stare at each other a moment, him half hidden behind a shelf, her buried to her elbows in paper, and then he looks away, the sorrow in his stare fading just long enough for her to see a spark of muted fascination.

"That belonged to a teacher of his," Yae says, gesturing to the flaking six-fold screen he's staring at so intently. "I can't remember whom."

"It's beautiful." His words sound almost shy.

Wind drags a branch somewhere along a wall.

"Will you sit?" Yae asks, indicating the pillow before the desk.

Hinasaki does, but not comfortably.

"You said there was someone else here," Yae says after a time. "A woman."

Hinasaki averts his eyes again. "Kirie."

"Kirie," Yae repeats. "Did she come here with you?"

"… No."

"Where is she?"

A moment, and Hinasaki answers. "Down there. Underground."

Yae feels colder than ever, but she refuses to let it claim her. There had been so many nightmares, in the days when she'd known nothing more than her name, of caves and darkness and the evils snared within. Not even Mikoto had been able to convince her to come down to the caves below Himuro, cutting through the mountains like tainted roots to snare anyone brave enough to wander in. Ryozo had insisted he would keep a keen eye on their daughter every time they ventured down, and Yae still refused to move from that door until both were back and safe. She will never go down there, even now. "Does she know I'm here?"

"Yes."

Yae thinks. "And yet you come alone."

"It's not her choice."

Yae stares at him a long time before turning back to the papers. This one is dated more than a decade before she'd met Ryozo and signed by a Mr. Asou. Yae sets it down gingerly before going on to another. She doesn't mean to ignore him, but conversation has never come to her easily, and the feeling that she _should_ be comfortable around him is only making this harder. Ryozo had always made friends wherever he went. Mikoto, too. They would know what to say.

"This looks a lot like my grandmother's study," Hinasaki says. Yae looks up sharply. His eyes are on the walls, the shelves, everything else her husband left behind. "I used to spend so much time in there, when I was younger. She had so many books…"

Yae bites her lip to stop herself from asking what she shouldn't. "She loved it when her father would read to her." Yae searches the shelves for one of her daughter's favorites and can't pick one shadow from the rest. "He would tell her stories, too, if she asked."

Hinasaki makes a small, wistful sound. Another stretch of silence.

"Do you remember anything else about her?" Yae asks.

"Yes. But I was very young when she…" His mouth twists.

"You can say it," Yae says, even as the thought tears holes in her heart. But he doesn't.

Hinasaki turns slightly to lean against the writing desk, twisting to cross his legs. He scrapes his hands over his knees, solemnly considers the floor. "She smiled a lot," he says, with the slightest smile to match. "But she was stubborn, too. My mother kept pushing for her to live with us after our grandfather died, but she refused to leave their house. She told me she still sensed him there. I think I did, too."

Yae stares.

"She had an entire room of nothing but books. There was this game she liked to play with with me, with masks. She had so many photos on the walls, but I could never make out who was in them. My sister was the one who always loved looking through her albums."

"Did she have her own camera?" Yae asks, clipped.

Hinasaki picks up on her tone quickly enough. "Yes." He waits.

Yae draws her kimono in tight like she hopes to fight the chill. "You can't be that old," she says. "Nineteen? Twenty?"

"Twenty-one," he says.

"Too young," Yae murmurs. She can hardly feel the wind, but she can smell the lake on the air. It's such a clean scent. Calming. "Was there anyone else? Any other family you remember?"

No answer. Yae wonders if he's heard her. And then he's speaking up. "There was just my sister. Our father left a long time ago. And Mother…" Pain darkens his eyes. "Mother left, too."

"No one else?"

"No one."

Yae folds her hands into her sleeves, hoping she sounds as sincere as she feels. "I'm sorry. It must have been terribly lonely."

Hinasaki says nothing. Yae bears him no ill will. She's heard the same words a thousand times herself, and never from people who saw her as anything more than a creature to be coddled and pitied.

"You never told me your sister's name," Yae says, not looking up. She had always wanted a sister, herself. "Is she still…?"

"Yes." Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him duck his head. Then, like he's only just remembered: "Miku."

"That's a beautiful name."

"Yeah."

"Were you close?"

All he does is nod, and hesitantly.

"How old is she?"

"… Seventeen. Last I knew."

Too young, too young. "Does she have any children?"

Hinasaki's smile comes small and thin and just slightly amused. "She had a cat."

Yae allows her own small smile. "Mikoto did, too, in the house before this one. A little black kitten, with one white foot. Her father bought it for her. It made him sneeze so terribly, but he'd insisted on keeping it around." And then all she can see is their faces. Abruptly, Yae begins to cry.

Hinasaki looks lost. She doesn't fault him for it. Yae has never known how to comfort the grieving, either. He puts weight on his arm like he means to push up and approach her. Yae just holds out a hand, waits to catch her breath.

"I'm sorry," Yae says.

"No," Hinasaki says. "It's all right."

The wind blows softly. The night stretches on.

"Thank you—for telling me everything," Yae says when the tears finally stop. Her voice is still too hoarse, too strangled. "If I'd known she'd gotten away safely, maybe…" She breathes sharply through her nose. "Maybe none of this would have ever happened." She cuts in before Hinasaki can do more than open his mouth. "I'm glad she had you in her life. You seem like a very…" Yae looks away. "Thank you."

"What are you looking for?" Hinasaki asks after a moment, gesturing to the chest. "Kirie may know where it is."

Yae scrapes a tear from her eye and shakes her head as demurely as she can. "I was just trying to find a name. Maybe it's better that I've forgotten it."

"A name?"

"Someone my husband knew. And someone I think I was supposed to know, too." Yae stares at the wall. "You're not like the others who were trapped here. I can't remember much, but I know I wasn't—myself before I woke up alone. This mansion's evil never touched you. What's keeping you here?"

Hinasaki casts his eyes to the floor. "I chose to stay."

Yae wants to ask the obvious, but all she does is bite her tongue.

"I'd heard about this mansion for years," Hinasaki says, staring off into the gloom. "I knew so many people who'd laugh when anyone said it was haunted. I guess I did too, even if…" His fingers clench. "Even if I saw things they didn't."

Yae stares.

"My mentor went missing here, with two other people I knew. I almost went with them, but his assistant told me to stay behind. She was like me. She could… sense things. Sometimes I wonder if everything would have turned out differently, if I'd gone. Sometimes I wonder if they'd still be alive."

"They're free now," Yae says, hoping it's the right thing to say as her thoughts drift to her husband.

"I know." Hinasaki leans back to consider the ceiling. "But it still hurts."

Something flashes white through a crack in the wall. A dusting of snow flurries paints shadows through the room's one screen. Mikoto had always wanted to see snow. Yae bites back her pain and swallows up the memories as her fingers knot together in her lap. She's always dreaded the cold.

"I'm here because I made a promise to someone," Hinasaki says. "I'm here because I don't want them to be alone."

Yae curls her fingers tighter. "I think…" She breathes slowly and deeply. "I think that's why I'm still here, too."

Their eyes meet.

* * *

Time crawls past in death, and yet the next night comes too quickly. Yae has to collect herself before sitting on the crumbling steps leading up to the household shrine, staring at her reflection as it warps and twists in shreds of broken glass, and it's not just because all this snow has her wanting to retreat back into the false safety of the house. Yae had felt the winter year-round, when she'd still been alive. A chill could take her even on the warmest days of the year. But everything's cold now and the snow passes right through her, and nothing else matters but the answers to these questions. She'd been inside this shrine once, when Ryozo had still been with her, and not a moment more than she could bear. The cold mountain air had turned her legs into two creaking boards. Ryozo had all but carried her up the path to a door he'd claimed had not been opened in nearly a century. He'd been grinning so brightly that Yae hadn't found the heart to voice her worry. Ryozo had only seen history. Yae had seen a house of forsaken gods. The single towering mirror waiting for them just beyond the door had done nothing to assuage her uneasiness.

That mirror has long since shattered. The head of a broken Buddha statue peeks up from the shards like a rotten tooth. Yae peers into the darkness as a thousand Yaes stare back. Waiting to be joined. Waiting to be completed. Yae only jumps a little when a man clears his throat behind her.

"Mrs. Munakata."

Yae beckons him over without turning. Hinasaki settles onto the steps a polite distance beside her. The trees shield them from the worst of the frost. She can hear something ringing somewhere. A bell, no, a chime. Boards creak around them like the shrine is groaning in pain.

"Did I interrupt you?" Hinasaki asks.

"No." These gods mean nothing to her, even if she fears them.

A bird trills from a branch as silence stretches like a canyon between them. These woods hold so much life even as death taints every shadow. Yae could almost find it serene, if not for the maimed statues staring at her wherever she looks.

"Do you know any prayers?" Yae asks softly. She'd said so many as a girl, yet she could count the number of shrines she'd visited on one hand. Ryozo had never told her why she'd so greatly feared priests.

Hinasaki shifts. "A few."

"That's good," Yae says. "You should never forget your gods."

A ringing. A voice.

"I've never liked this shrine," Yae says, "or these woods. But something about it always draws me back. It's so quiet here. All the others I've visited always seemed so busy."

"It is peaceful," Hinasaki says, but Yae thinks there's a marked difference between quiet and peace. "I went around studying shrines, for a while, but never one this remote."

"Studying? For what?

He almost looks embarrassed. "I… wanted to become a folklorist."

Yae can't help it. She smiles. "I suppose now you can say where that came from."

Hinasaki manages to offer up a slip of a smile. It slips away quickly enough.

"Mr. Hinasaki," Yae says, and stops. The words don't feel right on her tongue. But courtesy has carried her far longer than any sense of familiarity. She breathes before pushing to her feet. Weeds have overtaken many of the smaller statues and stones. She bends to tear some away, thinking back to all the time and effort her husband had given to have this shrine restored. She tosses aside a fistful of dead grass to find an earth-worn etching of an armless woman, bound in rope. Yae wonders how long it's been buried.

There's a crunch of stone. Hinasaki is on his feet, coming to a stop just before the great red gate and looking up at the snow-crusted arch. He bends to take up his own fistful of weeds. Not a word is shared between them as they move to take the opposite sides of the path. So many of the statues are broken. Yae takes up a cracked board and sets it gingerly on the steps. "Tell me about your studies," she says.

Hinasaki peers at her over his shoulder. "There's… not really much to talk about."

"Nothing at all?"

Hinasaki looks away. "I studied a little bit of everything, I guess." He shucks a root off a Buddha that's had most of its head chiseled away and stares down at the stump of its neck. "I was an editor for a while. I'd always liked to write."

Yae smiles to herself. Ryozo had never gone anywhere without a journal. "What did you write about?"

"Folk legends, mostly."

"You sound so resigned."

Hinasaki turns the statue in his hands. "I don't like to think about how many of those legends turned out to be true."

They're nowhere close to done by the time they stop to rest. The shrine is still in shambles, the mirror in pieces just inside, but the undergrowth is just a little less imposing, the path a little more open. Hinasaki sets down the headless Buddha and stares at it for a long time.

"Was there ever anyone else around here?" he asks. "Any other families? Any other houses?"

"There were villages," Yae says. "Very few would come to visit. Why do you ask?"

Hinasaki stares at his hands. "I've been wondering if there's anyone else out there. Anyone like us. You said you heard someone calling you, didn't you?"

Yae frowns. "I didn't know anyone around here. We had a few servants who came up from a nearby village. They spoke so strangely, I could hardly understand them. I can't imagine any of them would be calling for me."

"Maybe it was someone you knew before?"

Yae's stomach sinks. "I suppose." She looks up at the sky when she realizes the snow has stopped falling. The clouds have broken. The stars are bright tonight. Maybe there will be a moon.

* * *

It comes as a great surprise, but the needles in Ryozo's bookbinding kit are somehow still sharp. Better for them to have survived the books than the other way around. Hinasaki jolts when he jabs his finger for the fourth time in as many minutes. "Miku was always better at these kinds of things than I was," he says.

Yae can believe it. He's holding the needle by the tip, for one. "Does she often sew?"

"More than that. I'd go to bed while she was hemming a skirt and wake up to her wrapping a set of homemade candles for gifts. She loved working with paper, too." His soft smile fades just enough. "I had a lamp on my desk. She made the lampshade."

"I'm sure it meant a lot to her," Yae says.

Hinasaki rolls the needle back and forth across his thumb. "Not as much as it meant to me."

* * *

"Was Mr. Asou someone important?" Hinasaki asks the next night. Yae looks up from her husband's notes. Wind rattles the walls of the study as Hinasaki looks at her over a mountain of letters and journals. He has a piece of paper in each hand. They're both so old that the ink has nearly faded.

"I can't say I know," Yae says. "Why?"

"He's mentioned a lot." Hinasaki furrows his brow. "And I knew someone named Asou."

"It's a fairly common name." Yae digs into the nearest stack, still mindful of the pages.

"Yeah." Hinasaki's staring at the paper, but his eyes are far away. "Yeah, it is."

* * *

"Kirie wants to talk to you," Hinasaki says the night after that, like a plea.

They're standing in front of the shrine, clearing up what they can as snow flurries drift like ashes around them. They're making progress, however slowly. It's a dark night. Even the birds have gone silent.

"Can she not come to me?" Yae asks after a time.

"She would if she could."

Yae considers that. "I can't."

"It isn't far—"

"I can't." Only evil dwells underground. There's that dream again, that nightmare. Men in shadowed veils and girls with painted throats. "I'm sorry."

He draws away. "I understand."

 _You don_ _'t_ , Yae thinks, but holds her tongue. She looks out into the darkness. The trees never seem to end.

* * *

"Makabe," Hinasaki says, and Yae flinches. "Is that the name you're looking for? It's dated the same year."

Yae swallows before lifting a shaking hand over the desk. "May I see that?" She looks over the letter when he passes it to her, the words hardly registering. The wind just outside the window sings of an early spring, still weeks away.

"Seijiro," she whispers.

"I saw his name in other letters," Hinasaki says.

"That's not the name." But Yae doesn't set down the paper. "Where else is he mentioned?"

* * *

"Do you ever look into a mirror," she asks Hinasaki later, staring down at the glass shards they've gathered up piece by broken piece and set in a pile in the center of the shrine, "and wonder if someone else is staring back at you?"

"I can't say I have," he says after a moment.

"I have." She thinks back to the Makabe house, back to the time when she'd been nothing more than a name and Mikoto had been nothing more than a promise, and she thinks of all the hours she'd spent trying to find another person in her reflection, all the time she'd spent asking if this was truly, truly her face. "Every time I've looked."

* * *

"You said your mother's name was Miyuki?" she asks him later still.

Hinasaki tenses. "I did."

"That was the name of a girl from one of Mikoto's favorite stories. Her father loved to tell it to her."

"… I think she told it to me, once or twice."

A breeze kicks up. The branches rattle and scratch.

 _Did your mother look like me?_ Yae wants to ask, thinking back to the very first word he'd ever said to her. _Did she look like my twin?_

* * *

 _Tell me about your mother_ , Yae wants to say the next night, or maybe the next. They're standing at the edge of the lake, staring out into the mist as it threatens to swallow up the one standing grave. Yae's never seen ice floating on its surface before. She's forgotten what it looks like in the day. _Tell me about my granddaughter._ Something twinges in her chest.

"Did your mother grow up around here?" she asks instead.

Hinasaki looks out into the water once his shock has settled. "I don't know. We never spoke much. Especially after Dad…" He looks away. "I don't think she did. Miku would probably know."

"I hope she lived somewhere warm," Yae says. "The mountains are no place to raise a child."

There are questions in Hinasaki's eyes, but all he does is stare.

"Mikoto used to say there were monsters in these waters. Little green imps with turtle shells on their backs and small pools of water on the tops of their heads. She'd say they'd try to eat her any time she went near the shore. I'd always thought it was just another one of her father's ghastly stories. I don't know why he told them to her. But with everything I know now, who can say? Maybe we'll find one if we look long enough."

Hinasaki blinks, bewildered into silence. For a moment, Yae wonders if he thinks she's gone mad. And then his lips part, his breath whistles, and he asks the very last thing she expects to hear. "Did she say they'd grab her by the legs and try to suck out her heart?"

Yae turns to him with her own silent questions.

"She had a river by her house. She used to tell me there were creatures in there that would eat me if I told lies."

Yae stares at him. The wind sighs past. The water rushes with a whisper through the empty air of their legs. And then Yae is laughing, softly, but still louder and cheerier than she has in a very long time, and then Hinasaki is laughing, and it doesn't matter if there's anything else out there, anything at all. Yae has a reason to smile. That's all she's wanted for as long as she can remember.

* * *

Yae clutches the letter in her trembling fists, the wind rattling the walls as she kneels before the open trunk. Every other paper has been forgotten, every other name pushed far, far away.

"Mrs. Munakata?" Hinasaki asks softly.

Yae hardly hears him. Itsuki. That boy's name had been Itsuki.

* * *

A full moon and another layer of frost find her alone in the atrium, staring out at the malformed cherry tree as she wonders what could have been. She's lived those last moments so many times now. Would she have ended her life in the lake instead, if she hadn't had a place to tie that noose? Would she have swallowed poison? Would she have left this all behind for the call of the mountains or the trees, wandered for days until her body broke down and the forest reclaimed her as it had failed to do so many years before? Yae doubts all of it. It had felt… right… to hang herself. Like it had been something she'd owed to someone else. Someone she'd wronged. Wasn't that how everyone was supposed to die in this mansion? By a rope? Yae clenches her hands when she sees movement in the corner of her eye.

"Mrs. Munakata?"

Yae says nothing, just slides over on the bench tucked in the shadows of the porch until there's enough room for two. Hinasaki stands there a moment before crossing over to seat himself. The silence lasts an eternity.

"Kirie," he says, and then nothing else. Not immediately. "Kirie wanted to tell you she was sorry."

Yae doesn't look away from the tree.

"She wanted to save all of you," Hinasaki says. "She wanted to help. And she doesn't know why you're still here, but she wants to help you now."

Yae finds her words in the nail marks on her palms. "I don't blame her," she says. _I blame myself_ , she thinks. "And I don't think she can help me."

Hinasaki opens his mouth. She shushes him with the slightest wave of her hand.

"You shouldn't feel guilty," Yae says. "Neither of you. I'm here because there's something I still need to do. I think I've known that all my life."

"I… don't understand."

"You don't need to. You just need to believe me."

Wind drags the cherry branches into a kind of panicked scratching, sending them rattling against one another as the last of the winter ice licks at the air. Spring is so close now, yet that tree will never bloom. All Yae can see there now is her body dangling like rotten fruit. Bound by a rope. Bound by red.

"Mr. Hinasaki," she says, and bites down hard on her tongue. "Mafuyu," she tries. He jerks around like she's slapped him. "Mafuyu," she says again, "you can't leave this mansion, can you?"

He says nothing. Not to her surprise.

"I still haven't tried," Yae says, looking up at the small strip of sky the porch roof allows her. "But I think I can."

Mafuyu's eyes widen.

"I don't know what's waiting for me out there, but…" Yae stares at the stars and wonders if they're the same she'd seen when she'd awoken in that forest. "She's calling me. _They_ _'re_ calling me."

"Who?" Mafuyu asks, hardly more than a whisper.

"I don't know." Yae's throat tightens as she fights back another wave of tears. "I don't know…"

A bell. A chime. A voice on the wind.

"Mafuyu," she says again, "could I ask a favor?"

There's one room she's refused to visit, in all the time since she's died. It's only an old storeroom, no more haunted by death than it is dust and rot, yet she's never even set a hand on the door. Most everything inside are items left behind by the family before hers. All but for some boxes of Ryozo's less treasured books. And one great chest, still mostly empty.

"I've never been in here alone," Yae says once she has a foot in the doorway. The shine of an old suit of armor greets her through a cloud of dust and mold. Mafuyu stands behind her, confused into silence. She only goes inside when she finally picks out one shadow from the rest. "This is mine."

Mafuyu wanders over once she's got the lid peeled back, and he bends over her shoulder to peer at a bundle of faded white cloth, brilliant in the dark. It's still intact after all these years, and Yae doesn't know if she should feel grateful or afraid. But the kimono she'd been wearing when Ryozo had found her weeping among those trees isn't what she's come here for. It's the cord that had tied that kimono together, thin and red and still so vibrant. She cradles it in her fingers like she expects it to crumble to dust. It somehow feels warm.

"Mrs. Munakata?" Mafuyu asks.

"I'm not a Munakata," Yae says simply. She feels she should be afraid, mortified, but the words fall from her lips like stones and leave her feeling so much lighter. She isn't betraying her husband, her daughter. She's fulfilling a duty. The girl who'd locked this cord away had been someone else, someone who'd neglected a great obligation. She is no one but herself.

"Is that all you're looking for?" Mafuyu asks after a long, heavy silence.

Yae wants to say otherwise, but her hands are already working the lid back into place. The cord bunches into her palm and slips up into her sleeve. It pulses like a heartbeat.

"Mrs.—" Mafuyu trails off, pressing his lips together.

"Yae," she says. "Yae is all I've ever been." She doesn't realize she's crying until Mafuyu has a hand curled around her shoulder.

* * *

 _Yae_ , someone calls in the haze. _Yae._

* * *

"I was standing here," Mafuyu says, back in the atrium, back beside her, under the great dead cherry tree, "the first time I heard you playing that koto."

Yae looks up from the cord bunched in her fingers, hardly feeling the heat.

"I almost didn't come up. I didn't want to leave Kirie alone. She has these… moments, where she doesn't talk to me, or she doesn't see me, or she doesn't hear me, and sometimes when she does, she calls me someone else's name. She doesn't do it on purpose. There's something down there that… drains her. And lately, those moments have been getting longer and longer. Sometimes I'm scared she'll never come back. I'm more scared she'll wake up and see that I'm not there. She knows I'm here now, but… I don't know if she'll still remember by the time I get back." His jaw clenches. "The night I heard you was the first night I walked away."

Yae stares.

"Kirie's been here… a very long time. It didn't take her long to find me. She grabbed me, and—I saw things. I saw her before she had died, I saw this mansion before everyone else had died, and I saw… someone who looked just like me. But it wasn't me. It was someone who had been dead for years. And when I finally saw Kirie for what she truly was, I thought… Maybe I could help someone. Maybe I could _finally_ do something right." He averts his eyes. "I know that sounds—ridiculous. But I—"

"No." Yae stares down at the cord glowing dimly in her cold, cold hands, and squeezes. "No. I understand."

"This was her favorite place." A smile comes to Mafuyu's lips, soft and distracted and not the slightest bit happy. "I wish she could see it again."

Yae looks to the tree, still bare and bloomless after all these years, and quietly folds her hands.

* * *

"I'll come back," she says at the gate, her voice thin and strange. "It may be… a very long time from now. I need to find someone. I need to help them. But I'll come back. I promise."

Mafuyu stares at her. They say nothing, for a time. They don't need to.

"Thank you," Yae says anyway. He towers over her, and yet he feels so small and frail in her arms. Every step closer to the gate tightens the ropes that have formed around his wrists and throat. However much he's shaking, she's shaking harder. "Thank you..."

The road to home is long and dark. Yae pays no mind to the shadows or the guilt that threatens to pull her apart with every step forward. She has a duty. She has a family. She can't turn back now. The forest opens up to ruins, to water, and still Yae moves on, her eyes on the horizon as it begins to glow and burn. When she happens upon the riverbed and the first fallen statue, Yae stops just long enough to pulls the weeds from its cracks. Twins bound in stone, guardians for all eternity. Yae smiles like she somehow knows what it means.

The lake seems to go on forever. She wonders if she should recognize any of the shadows rotting in its depths. There's a small bench overlooking the shoreline, mottled with weeds and lichen and any number of small, twitching insects. They scatter when she moves to sit. All but for a butterfly, small and pale. Her throat constricts when she sees that one of its wings has been torn. A moment. She'll just rest a moment, and she'll be back under that red gate, where she belongs. The butterfly ghosts up her arm to cling to her shoulder. _I_ _'m_ _sorry_ , she wants to say, but she doesn't know to whom. _I_ _'m here_ , she wants to scream, but she doesn't know who's listening. She's come too late, home is gone, and yet the sun has finally come to her, the cord still thrums in her hands. She can stay. She can wait. She _has_ to.

 _Forever_ , Yae thinks. _I_ _'ll wait forever._ It's nightfall by the time she pushes up to her feet and disappears into the water.


End file.
